5 SIP Softphones you must download

SIP is now a standard protocol for almost every VOIP Provider. Most of the VOIP service providers are now sharing their SIP settings in public. This trend is inceasing. VOIP providers do not mind if you use a third party SIP softphone, ATA or VOIP adapter to connect to their service as long as you use their service and make some money for them. after its a business proposition.

Slowly even non-SIP settings VOIP providers will open up as more and more people get educated about SIP and VOIP. The kind of flexibility SIP gives you will definately change the trend sooner or later.

Now We have already seen how to configure SIP on SIP softphone.

Today, we will be looking at some must-have SIP softphones. Of course, you won't be using all them. Still these SIP softphones are handy and kind of fun to play around with. Every softphone has some unique functionality to improve your VOIP experience.

1)X-lite: Perhaps the most popular SIP/VOIP/IAX softphone in the world. It has all the features you need in a perfect SIP softphone however lacks on number of SIP service you can run at once. You can only use one SIP account at a time.

2) EyeBeam: Another great product from Counterpath, the same company that gave you X-lite. Eyebeam is a upgraded version of X-lite. Gives you more flexibility which lacks in X-lite such as using multiple SIP accounts at once. However It's a paid product.

Tip to get Eyebeam for FREE: Owtalk offers a free eyebeam softphone. However it's restricted to use as Owtalk service only. See if you can crack it :-)

3) Ekiga: Formely known as GnomeMeeting, is an open source VoIP and video conferencing application for GNOME. Ekiga uses both the H.323 and SIP protocols. It supports audio and video codecs, and is interoperable with other SIP compliant software and also with Microsoft NetMeeting. Ekiga also offers their very own SIP service and you can get yourself a SIP account under address (AT) ekiga.net.

The best feature of ekiga, open source and allows Simultaneously Register to Several Accounts. It also supports DTMF and ENOM.

4) YATE : YATE (Yet Another Telephony Engine) is a next-generation telephony engine. YATE can be used as a VOIP server as well as VOIP client and has some great advanced features such as Call center server, IVR engine, Prepaid and/or postpaid cards system Jingle server, PC2Phone and Phone2PC gateway, VoIP to PSTN gateway. YATE is highly recommended for professional VOIP users to get more out of VOIP systems.

5) Twinkle: This might not be extremely popular however we found this to be good old simple SIP softphone that newbies can play with. Twinkle is a softphone for your voice over IP and instant messaging communcations using the SIP protocol. It allows upto 2 simulateneous lines. It uses Secure voice communication by ZRTP/SRTP and MD5 digest authentication support for all SIP requests. Twinkle is definately worth exploring for its unique security features.

We will try to cover PBX softwares in our next article. If you have a PBX system and want us to consider you in the list, Please drop us an email (shivkokroo@gmail.com) with feature list of your PBX system.